Four brand-new Gems now out in Cinemas

This is the thing with blogs, sometimes there are factors influencing the publication of new posts, sometimes there is just life in between.
My third year has started and I'm very excited for everything that is going to come: my dissertation project, the possibility of attending the summer school in NYU, and the exciting opportunity of applying to the London Film School for a MA in Screenwriting.
To celebrate this great beginning and the hopefully bright future ahead I want to share 4 experiences I had at the cinema during the past 3 weeks.

 Boyhood 

(Richard Linklater, 2014)

The splendor of simplicity.
Boyhood was an absolute revelation, a film that I would define splendid for its touching lightness, its great soundtrack and acting and the ambitious, but perfectly accomplished project it achieved.
Cinema has always been interested with the capturing of time-passing and life on screen, Boyhood follows the life of Mason by following his actor and the whole cast over 12 years. This growth process is accompanied by all the changes in technologies, music trends, clothes, dreams and family problems we, kids born in the 90s, went through.
The film is funny, true to itself and deeply moving. A little gem that should be cherished for as long as possible.
My favourite scenes were probably the ones involving the father and his music lectures while driving somewhere, an experience I can absolutely relate to and still one of my favourite moments in the company of my dad.

Watch the trailer here:

http://youtu.be/Ys-mbHXyWX4

20.000 Days on Earth 

(Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 2014)

Thanks for this little history Nick.
Nick Cave, the importance of remembering, the transforming power of performance. These are the three key elements of the exquisite experimental picture following the 20.000th day on earth in the life of living music legend Nick Cave. Being a big fan of his work was only a part of the process of falling in love with this film. The biggest achievement of the film was the intertwining of different spaces and times sequences which exquisitely came from the memory process Nick goes through during the meeting with his psychiatrist. Moreover, photographs, footage of concerts, and stories from Nick's collaborators were used to create this storytelling web that finally forms Nick Cave's memory as a man, a musician, a singer, a composer, a writer, a storyteller. And a damn fine one.
An absolutely dazzling experience, beautifully shot and edited, moving and deep as Brighton's sea.

For you know the time is nigh

When I must remove your wings

And you, you must try to fly.

(The Ship Song, Nick Cave)

Thanks for making us fly Nick.
If anybody is interested Nick Cave will be playing in London in May, I already got my ticket for May 3rd at the Royal Albert Hall. It's gonna be worth every minute of it.

Watch the trailer here:

http://youtu.be/Ap0_y5EGttk

Gone Girl 

(David Fincher, 2014)

Wow. What the hell just happened? This was my thought during the whole film, but I adored its cleverness and I will soon venture into reading the book. I was completely taken into the story and I never felt the narrative was becoming cliché or the film too long for the narrative. It was amazing to watch it at the Odeon during its big weekend opening because it was a collective spectatorial experience. We all laughed (a lot), got shocked (even more), thought wtf (more than anything) and I thought it was brilliant. The acting was one of its most accomplished components: Rosamund Pyke was unbelievable, stunning, she held the story together and developed her complex character in a very intriguing way. Ben Affleck gave a good performance as well, but, in my opinion, the secondary characters made the film: Neil Patrick Harris as Deni Collings, Carrie Coon as Margo Dunne, Kim Dickens as Detective Rhonda Boney and all the others.
David Fincher and Gillian Flynn created a strong collaboration and managed to turn a best-selling thriller from words to visual without disappointing the readers and spectators.
You will like the film if you're a Hithcock's fan (think about Vertigo, especially), if you liked but also had problems with Fatal Attraction, and if you would love the idea of a combination of these two with much much more.

Watch the trailer here:

http://youtu.be/Ym3LB0lOJ0o

Björk: Biophilia Live 

(Nick Fenton and Peter Strickland, 2014)

I happily managed to get a ticket for the Sonic Gala hosted by this year's London Film Festival showing the premiere of Björk's concert focused on her album Biophilia (2011). In my opinion, Björk is one of the most complete visual and musical artists we have today, she creates a whole universe out of her music and she has strong performance qualities through which she can engage, move, electrify and absolutely puzzle her audience. Biophilia as a concept gave life to an album rich in poetry, creativity and dedication. The Earth, the Moon and everything that composes nature around us become the protagonist of the visual design of the concert and the film. They open up to us through the stunning sound and musical instruments expressly created for the album and Björk's voice and gestures accompanied by the stunning female choir from Iceland.
At the end of it I just wanted to stand up, dance and congratulate the directors and producer, and her who has always remained true to her music and herself.

Watch the trailer here:

http://youtu.be/zvLZl1HlW3Y

Fatal Attraction On Stage at the Haymarket Theatre

I studied Fatal Attraction (1987) a few months ago as part of the module Hollywood Cinema, and it left me with many doubts and concerns. First, I’m not a fan of Michael Douglas, but a huge fan of Glenn Close and it was painful to see her character’s treatment within the narrative; second, after reading about the gender politics of the film and its will to align the audience with the main male character, therefore wanting to ‘kill the bitch’ as he wants, I was rather disappointed that a film condemning single career women in such a way had been made.

However, the narrative is suitable within its historical context, even though it doesn’t justify the treatment of women at all, as I wrote in a previous blog post:

http://artbookscinema.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/suggested-viewings-from-kcl-film-studies.html

The message is simple: be a perfect housewife waiting for your man to come home while raising your children and dreaming about the suburbs. If you try to be independent while enjoying your career and man’s company, but still dreaming of having children and a future companion well, then, you must be killed off, because restoring the family nucleus seems to be the only solution in Fatal Attraction.

But, wait a moment, has this film always been thought this way?

I advice you to read something about it and you will find out that the film has been changed to justify Michael Douglas's character inability to keep it in his pants.

A few weeks ago I saw this poster while walking on the tube:

My first thought was that I wanted to see Kristin Davis live, not only because of my personal affection for Sex and the City, but because I think she has a great potential that must gain the right recognition. 

My second thought was about the adaptation and how great it would have been, if well done, in emphasizing the thriller feel of the film, the entrapment of houses and flats and the maniac relationship with phone calls.

Last night I finally got my tickets and got ready for the show.

Despite being a little emotionally distant during the first part, I fell madly in love with the two great female performances which reach their peak in the second part of the play.

Kristin Davis is designed for the role, she took the stereotype of her character in Sex and the City, with a woman seemingly satisfied about her life, but whose satisfaction is rather bitter: the scene in which Daniel confesses his affair left everyone completely breathless in the theatre, and the intensity of the scene was completely reached thanks to her performance.

What to say, then, about Natascha McElhone? Not only her diction and speech delivery extremely reminded me of the original Alex Forrest, but her allure on stage was incredible. An actress perfectly designed for the part and who manages to drag you into the narrative with her incredible emotional charge.

Anyways, Mark Bazeley was absolutely incredible in re-elaborating Michael Douglas’s character, and the addition of his narrating voice, in my opinion, succeeded in moving the sympathies within the narrative from him to Alex and Beth more than anyone. 

I observed the audience’s reaction and at any comment about his innocence and about how his life was ruined by Alex you could hear most of the audience giggle as if we all wanted to say: "You should have thought about it before bastard."Let’s stop blaming women for being 'emotional', when men can get away with adultery, and disregard the other woman, for the sake of the one they have already betrayed.

Thanks to James Dearden, writer of both film and play, and director Trevor Nunn for this amazing adaptation which finally puts its characters where they were originaly supposed to be. I won’t spoil the ending, but I suggest to watch the film first in order to get the importance of significant changes. Great job to both main and secondary characters, the cast was perfectly chosen and in line with its original source.

This is the play’s world premiere and you can see it until June at the Haymarket Theatre for only £10 in the gallery! A must-see!

The other side of the French New Wave

Throughout the module about French New Wave I had the chance to see one great film after the other many of which I hadn't even heard of before. For this reason I want to share some of the less known titles with you and advice you to watch them because they each represent different facets of the movement and you will notice that the 'New Wave' had many more components rather than Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard only!
I put them in order according to my personal taste (I excluded the most famous such as The 400 Blows, Breathless, Pierrot le Fou and Hiroshima Mon Amour):

1. Lola, Jacques Demy (1961)

This scene is breathtaking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_8CLIPumEw

2. The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci (2003)

3. Les Bonnes Femmes, Claude Chabrol (1960)

4. Cléo de 5 à 7, Agnès Varda (1962)

Where have I been?

I have been absent for a long, long time, and I kept asking myself why I couldn't find anything to write about. It's been a tough couple of months and now that uni is over and I only have 3 essays and one exam left I feel like time has passed by again without asking for my permission. 

How on earth is it already April? How on earth am I graduating next year? And, most importantly, where has all my passion for films, books, art in one word, gone?

I think I got the answer while watching the sunset on the beach in Brighton. This is where my passion went, I thought, in living. In taking my eyes off of fiction texts for a while in order to recuperate my own lust for life. 

But don't worry, I am ready to start again now and I will leave you some pictures of the city I took over these past weeks. 

There are no film pictures for once, and like Francois Truffaut I am still wondering "Is the cinema more important than life?"

I think the answer lies here.

And this is me at the Martin Creed's exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, I think there isn't a funniest way to show the simplicity of happiness.

Suggested Viewings KCL Film Studies

From the module Film Theory I

 

Coeur Fidele (Jean Epstein, 1923) and Smiling Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac, 1923)

What I liked about those films is their relationship to the Impressionist film theory and movement, I'm becoming more and more fascinated with these early scholarly writings because they make us understand how much we now take for granted in the cinema experience. Germaine Dulac and Jean Epstein were exploring the possibility cinema has of exploring the flux of the human consciousness. If you are interested in the topic these films together with the two authors/directors' main writings are key starting points. You will realize how important a close-up (so common and natural nowadays) was to express that possibility, and the status of cinema as the new art.

From the module French New Wave

The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959)

Where shall I start? This film, together with Citizen Kane and Casablanca was one of my first and most beloved approaches to the magic of cinema. Truffaut's autobiographical film is not as much an open eye on his life, but the story of a universal situation regarding growing up and being a teenager in a family and society who are not able to understand you. But this is not everything the film is, this film has not influenced the world for its narrative only. Truffaut was able to find his voice in a new poetic of visual, which, more than anything else, hommages the love for cinema as the medium able to, why not, bring out an individual's hidden self, the medium able to speak directly to the soul. Truffaut's career and life will unfortunately conclude in 1984 after one last film: Confidentially Yours (Vivement Dimanche), the ending sequence of this film is a beautiful conclusion to what he started in 1959, watch it to see what I mean, I'll just tell you that the cinema is the game the children live and play with, the cinema is life.

From the module Topics in World Cinema

The Hour of the Furnaces (Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, 1968)

We watched the first part of this political manifesto film divided into three parts and coming out at a very particular moment in history: a moment in which all over the world filmmakers and intellectuals were starting to subvert the system at the service of the people. In this context Solanas and Getino wrote the Manifesto Towards a Third Cinema which is still one of the most important writing about cinema. Influenced by Marxist dialectic and based on class struggle the film has a very complex structures. Each part is subdivided into different sections each cross-cutting between intertitles used to deliver the political message, and the most disparate images: newsreels, advertisements, still images about consumerism, white society critique concerning the Unites States especially. The very disturbing slaughter's scene aims to show the unpleasant work behind the making of products and serves as an allegory for the selling of a nation, Argentina in this case. The iconic final shot shows a still of dead Che Guevara's close-up, a scene lasting 2 mins and 40 secs, through its dialectical film form the film requires the people to complete the last stage of class struggle and reach a new synthesis. A must-see for film lovers who appreciate the political engagement cinema offers.

From the module Cinema and Spectatorship

Bush Mama (Haile Gerima, 1979)

Among this list this is probably the most difficult film to find, but if we do, please watch it. It was a different and puzzling experience. The film is set in the black ghetto in LA in the 70s when the white police was violently attacking the black community. This story is not a common story, though we see characters, but we hardly recognize the characters and identify with them, because they embody the story of a social condition more than that of a single person. The recognizable protagonist is Dorothy, a woman and single mother struggling with alcoholism, parenting, marginalization, and the institutions. A touching text which does not leave a lot of space for melodramatic situations, only for the harshness of the truth.

2014 Asia House Pan Asia Film Festival 26 Feb - 9 Mar

I'm glad to announce the programme of this year's Pan Asian Film Festival which will take place around different venues in London between 26 February and 9 March.

The programme was released two days ago and you can get your own copy in the following venues: ICA, Ciné Lumiere, Riverside Studios, Genesis Cinema and Asia House, plus all around London in the following days.

This festival is a great opportunity to become more familiar with different kinds of films and filmmakers covering a huge geographical area, less known by Western audiences.

The programme is vary and it includes Q&As (highlights of the festival), so have look and get your tickets (you can purchase them at the different venues).
For detailed information visit: www.asiahouse.org

I'll be volunteering throughout the whole festival and if I have the chance to see some of the screenings I will certainly review the films and the experience in general!

Opening Night Gala - 26 Feb - 20.40 - ICA

Unforgiven - dir. Lee Sang-il, 2013, Japan, 135 mins

UK Premiere + Q&A

Award winning director Lee Sang-il (Hula Girls) mounts a handsome, powerful remake of Clint Eastwood's iconic revenge Western. Set in post-Meiji restoration Hokkaido, it stars Ken Watanabe (Letters from Iwo Jima) as Jubei Kamata, an ageing warrior who has left his crimes under the former Edo shogunate behind him. But poverty, and possibly a chance for redemption, allows a friend to persuade him to come out of retirement. Lavishly recreating its 1880s setting, which includes replacing guns with samurai swords, Lee effortlessly transposes the original film's themes of vengeance, loyalty and regret to its new setting. Unforgiven has been a major hit at festivals the world over, and the Pan-Asia Film Festival is delighted to be hosting the film's UK Premiere as its 2014 Opening Night Gala.

1 Mar - 18.00 - ICA

36 dir. Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 2012, Thailand, 68 mins

London Premiere

On the site of a derelict building, location scout Sai meets art director Oom, and they begin working together. Sai records everything on her digital camera, from images of locations to the people in her life. Two years later, Sai is still in the same job, while Oom has moved on. One day her computer crashes, wiping her hard drive, along with the images that capture an entire year of her life. Among them are those she'd taken of Oom, and an intense period of reflection and memory begins. Consisting of 36 shots, 36 won the main prize at the Busan International Film Festival in 2012, and is a delicate contemplation on the nature of memories in the digital age.

1 Mar - 18.30 - CINÉ LUMIÈRE

Dangerous Liaisons - dir. Jin-ho Hur, 2012, China, 106 mins

Gala Screening - UK Premiere

An alluring, stylish adaptation of the 18th century French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos starring Chinese superstar Zhang Ziyi (House of Flying Daggers, Memoirs of a Geisha), Cecilia Cheung, and Jang Dong-Gun. Made widely famous by Stephen Frears' 1988 film adaptation starring Glenn Close, here director Jin-ho Hur translates the novel's story of mind games and sexual intrigue to the glamorous high society of 1930s Shanghai, and creates a taught, powerful drama with phenomenal central performances, and lushly realized production design.

2 Mar - 16.00 - Riverside Studios

The Shape of the Night - dir. Nakamura Noboru, 1964, Japan, 106 mins

UK Premiere

Restored to mark the centenary of Nakamura Noboru's birth, The Shape of the Night is set to re-establish itself as a classic of Japanese cinema. A director famous for his lavish visual style - his Twin Sisters of Kyoto was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1963 - Nakamura Noburo's film sees Yoshie Nogami (an amazing Kuwano Miyuki) work as a factory worker by day, while moonlighting as a bar hostess at night. Seduced by regular Eiji Kitami, she begins a passionate love affair, until Eiji's demeanor changes and she is slowly forced into a life of prostitution. Living a life of despair, she eventually meets building engineer Fujii, who urges her to go straight and run away with him. But this swooning, tragic drama has other plans in store for her. A genuine rediscovery, The Shape of the Night is one of Japan's great female-centered melodramas, to rank alongside those of Ozu, Imamura and Naruse.

2 Mar - 16.30 - Ciné Lumière

Kami's Party - dir. Ali Ahmadzadeh, 2013, Iran, 80 mins

UK Premiere

Negin is spending a few days on holiday with her boyfriend Omid and her sister Nazan in a villa on the banks of the Caspian Sea. Not having had news of Omid for several hours, Negin decides to go with her friend Farnaz to a party being held by Kami, a mutual friend. The two young women drive off to Lavassan, a small district on the outskirts of Tehran, where the party is taking place. But Negin doesn't realize that a surprise awaits her in the trunk of the car. Portraying the life and relationships of the wealthy young adults of Iran, Kami's Party is a road-movie that takes viewers into the well-kept, secret worlds of the country's upper-classes. An important new film showing a side to the country not many in the West will have seen, and an important debut feature from a bright new voice.

2 Mar - 18.00 - ICA

Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy - dir. Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 2013, Thailand, 120 mins

UK Premiere

Mary is a senior in high school. With graduation a few months away, she is faced with crises in life, love, and friendship. Meanwhile, strange, random things keep happening to her. Portraying a character struggling to make sense of her life as it threatens to spin out of control, Nawapol's wickedly inventive second film creates an inventive narrative of an uncontrollable life through a brilliantly modern artistic concept: to adapt a Twitter stream into a fictional film. The director used 410 real Tweets from an anonymous girl as a springboard to create a fantasy world of a contemporary Asian teenager, and the results are funny and strange, a conflation of modern Thai teenage life, Wes Anderson-esque humour, and the possibilities for escape offered by the digital world.

5 Mar - 18.30 - Asia House

The Missing Picture - dir. Rithy Panh, 2013, Cambodia, 90 mins

Inc. Panel Discussion

The winner of Un Certain Regard section of Cannes in 2013, this stunning documentary uses a variety of visual mediums to explore the topic of genocide and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Detailing award-winning director Rithy Panh's attempts to recover and recreate a lost image from the period of Cambodia's recent tragic history, its use of claymation and archive footage offers a moving contemplation of memory and healing. The perfect film for an in-depth discussion hosted at Asia House as part of the Pan-Asia Film Festival, this film addresses one of the most sensitive subjects of recent Asian history in film, and like the recent The Act of Killing, offers a window for deeper understanding of these events.

7 Mar - 19.00 - ICA

The Tale of Iya - dir. Tesuichiro Tsuta, 2013, Japan, 169 mins

UK PREMIERE + Q&A

A beautiful, sweeping drama evoking the relationship between man and nature, set in Japan's last untouched region. A tunnel to be built in Iya threatens to disrupt the natural order as an elderly man (Min Tanaka) and his granddaughter Haruna (Rina Takeda) meet a young man from Tokyo (Shima Onishi), whose life will be changed forever in experiencing their simple, secluded lifestyle. Ambitious, beautiful and moving, Tetsuichiro Tsuta's sophomore feature depicts the nobility of co-existing with nature. Shot on 35mm in the mountains of Tokushima, it captures the changing seasons over the course of a year, creating a dreamlike visual poem that offers viewers a truly cinematic experience. Awarded a Special Mention in the Asian Future section of the Tokyo International Film Festival.

8 Mar - 17.00 - Genesis Cinema

Honour - dir. Shan Khan, 2013, UK, 96 mins

LONDON PREMIERE + PANEL DISCUSSION

An urban thriller set in West London starring Paddy Considine and rising star Aiysha Hart, Honour is one of the most powerful British films of the year. Mona is a young British Muslim girl on the run from her family after they uncover her plans to run away with her Punjabi boyfriend. In a desperate bid to save face and their family honor, her mother and older brother enlist the help of a bounty hunter to track her down. A sensitive, interesting take on debates within British-Asian communities, with a fantastic cast.

Closing Night Gala - 9 Mar - 18.00 - ICA

A Prayer for Rain - dir. Ravi Kumar, India/UK, 2013, 103 mins

UK PREMIERE + Q&A

A drama tackling one of the last half-century's great corporate and environmental scandals, A Prayer for Rain tells the powerful and moving story of the Bhopal tragedy. Featuring both a high profile Indian cast including Fagun Thakrar and Tannishtha Chatterjee, as well as American stars Martin Sheen, Kal Penn, and Mischa Barton, Ravi Kumar's debut is both a labour of love and a timely call for action, arriving on the 30th anniversary of the 1984 Union Carbide plant malfunction, the consequences of which are tragically ongoing. Dramatising the dependence of the local community on the chemical plant that will eventually cause catastrophe, and the series of oversights that led to an event that stands as a benchmark for corporate irresponsibility in the developing world, this is vital and important film with which to close this years festival.

Suggested Viewings KCL Film Studies

From the module Film Theory I

The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjostrom, 1921)

A early Swedish experimental film playing with film form and the possibility cinema has of accessing different worlds and showing them on screen. A good example to discuss the status of cinema as the Seventh Art, which at the time was still very much debated. The film has a very slow pace, seemingly simulating the lasting of real time and trying to transport it to cinema. The story is loosely based on a Swedish legend similar to A Christmas Carol. The great thing is that you can find it in its entirety on Youtube (I mentioned it last year in a blog post about The Shining and some of its inspirations: http://artbookscinema.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/seven-months-of-bfi-southbank.html) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg7hAwUGQmo

From the module French New Wave

Et Dieu...créa la femme/And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956)

If you are interested in stardom, and in female figures especially, this is the film for you. Brigitte Bardot's big debut with the film that changed her star persona both off and on screen. Moreover, the film, with its controversial topics and attitude, opened a debate on the French youth of the Fifties, its problems, indecision, but also its hunger for life. Delightful performance by what would then become the great Jean Louis Trintignant. A controversial picture which would have a big impact on the birth of the New Wave (pay attention to the use of Bardot's body in the opening sequence especially, and spot this shots in a famous Godard's film, Le Mepris/Contempt, to see the use he makes of the female body).

From the module Topics in World Cinema

The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

This week was the time of Gillo Pontecorvo's Golden Lion winning. This film is a stunning example of cinematography accompanied by Ennio Morricone's soundtrack and the use of non-professional actors in the roles of the Algerians. My favourite sequence in the whole film constructs a parallel montage of three different spaces as three Algerian women take bombs to different public spaces in the European part of the city. The sequence is beautifully constructed to build suspense, as we know about the bombs, and the camera focuses on the women's performances and the clock slowly approaches the explosions' time. You can watch it here to get an idea of the movie, but I would totally suggest it: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hYtN2zWX8c (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oAtMMvnDy0 (Part 2)

Interesting in form and content as one of the richest documents about the Algerian war from the point of view of the colonized. Very interesting in this merit is the analysis of character identification developed by Murray Smith in the essay "The Battle of Algiers: Colonial Struggle and Collective Allegiance."

From the module Cinema and Spectatorship

Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)

One of Sternberg's most famous and controversial pictures starring Marlene Dietrich, this film focuses on the performativity of gender (regarding femininity especially) as it portrays all the different roles Dietrich as woman performs. The narrative is not Sternberg's main focus as Laura Mulvey analyses he focuses on the impact of images and on the visual construction of the film, and his use of Dietrich's body deconstruction is a perfect example of psychoanalytic fetishization of the female body. So, have fun analyzing the different readings this film proposes, and Cary Grant is also in the film, but, who cares? Dietrich is The Star.